Richard Dawkins created a whole new wave of pro-Religion thinking and writting. His polemic attitude woke up many people who believed in humans not being just bones and blood and made them take the path of expressing their beliefs publickly. And guess what. He struck again! 🙂
Dawkins recently said that “Ignorance is no crime. There are all sorts of things I’m ignorant of, such as baseball, but I don’t regard it as insulting if somebody says I’m ignorant of baseball, it’s a simple fact. I am ignorant of baseball. People who claim to be Creationists are almost always ignorant of evolution. That’s just a statement of fact, not an insult. It’s just a statement. But it sounds like an insult. And I think that accounts for part of what you’ve picked up about my apparent image of being aggressive and offensive. I’m just telling it clearly” (!!!). [1]
Nice huh? Something like the “its ridiculous” argument… [2]
Dawkins claims to know the truth (a notion the mere existence of which is also in question by philosophers) and – moreover – that his opinion upholds the truth. I am noy standing to the “creation” case he refers to above. Dawkins has the same attitude regarding ANYTHING he says and writes about.
Who can actually claim that he is “RIGHT” ?
If you start from the axiomatic thesis that you are right and the others ignorant, then how can you ever doubt your self?
Religion has been preaching moral and ethical values for thousands of years. Does it have the right to claim that what she says is “right”? Well, it could. Who can argue that “do not kill” is wrong? And yet, if we are to say that religion cannot claim that even such simple truths are not to be held “right”, how can we be so arrogantly certain that our limited understanding based on recent scientific theories is “right”? The mere nature of scientific theories is to create models for interpretation. And EVERY theory is doomed to be replaced. Do we really want to leave the right to be “right” to such creations? (I will not go fully into the Religion vs. Science debate here – start from Religion & Science unification and you will see my point clearly)
Intuition and illogical thinking rules our lifes. We do not even know why we are alive. We do not know where we go. And yet some few of us claim to “know” all too many things. Do they have the right to do that? Does a man have the right to hybris? How many things must we discover that we do not know, before we stop claiming that we “know”?
True, genuine religion teaches modesty.
Maybe Dawkins could learn something from that…
Thank you Richard Dawkins!
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